Lust Killers

            Lust serial killers kill for the erotic satisfaction. They gain sexual arousal with the death of their victims. It is one of the most common types of motives among serial killers. Usually the victim is someone the killer is sexually attracted to. Most lust killers are male, although a rare occasion of female lust killers appears.

            In Portland, Oregon between 1968 and 1969 a man named Jerry Brudos would stalk, rape, and torture women. He was known as “The Lust Killer” and “The Shoe Fetish Slayer.” His first crime on record was at the age of 17 when he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Oregon for trapping a girl in a hole he dug holding the girl at knife-point. The purpose of the hole was to make her his sex slave. He went on to force her to pose nude while he took pictures. He was eventually released after only 9 months. However, it was clear that Brudos felt he had the need to act violently towards women. It was discovered that is strong violence towards women was from his hatred of his mother. Brudos attacked many women, although some were able to escape giving the police the information they needed to catch him. Police searched Brudos’s house and uncovered the evidence needed to convict him. He was charged with three of the four murders. Brudos had a collection of body parts and women’s underwear stored in his home. Brudos was found dead in the Oregon State Penitentiary on March 28^th, 2006. He was 67 years old and it was determined he died of natural causes.

            Jane Toppan, born Honora Kelley, was of the few female American serial killers. Born in 1857, she confessed to 31 murders in 1901. Her ambition was “to have killed more people-helpless people-than any other man or woman who ever lived…” In 1885, Toppan began her training as a nurse at Cambridge Hospital. She would use her patients in experiments with morphine and atropine. She was interested it the effect this had on their nervous system. She spent countless hours with her patients, medicating them until they were unconscious and then eventually getting into bed with them. It is still unknown whether sexual acts occurred, but when Toppan was asked after her arrest, she explained that she developed a sexual thrill from her patients being near death, coming back to life and then dying again. Once her patients were drugged, she would lay close to them until they died. She is one of the rarest forms of serial killers due to the fact that most female serial killers murder for material gain. In 1902, Toppan confessed to 11 murders. On June 23, she was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was therefore committed to life in the Taunton Insane Hospital. It was soon revealed by the New York Journal that Toppan confessed to her lawyer of killing more than 31 people. She was hoping to eventually be released, but remained in the hospital for the rest of her life.

Charles Montaldo, About.com Guide, http://crime.about/od/serial/a/jerry_brudos.htm

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